Molecules – The Eurogas Newsletter (March 2021)

All existing applications that currently use coal and oil and natural gas, can transition to using green hydrogen instead.

ITM Power has joined the Eurogas Board, effective March 2021, highlighting the importance of the association for technology developers, as well as energy suppliers and distributors, at this crucial juncture for energy legislation. Our company, from Sheffield in the UK, has previously demonstrated power-to-gas solutions with Thüga and RWE and is now nearing completion of the REFHYNE project with Shell at the Rheinland refinery in Germany. At its launch, RE FHYNE will be the world's largest PEM electrolyser plant at 10 Megawatts. (PEM stands for Polymer electrolyte membrane.)

Despite the renewed discussion around this technology in recent years, electrolysis is an old process and a simple process. Discovered at the start of the 19th Century, it passes electricity through water and divides it, splitting it into its two constituents, hydrogen and oxygen. ITM Power's electrolyser uses renewable electricity from wind and solar, thereby producing renewable hydrogen and renewable oxygen. It leaves no CO2 emissions, nor any associated greenhouse gas footprint. These are also highly responsive; meaning they can follow the variability of renewables and provide flexibility to electricity grid operators.

Projects like REFHYNE, as well as the recent sale of a 24MW PEM electrolyser to Linde, will demonstrate electrolyser technology on an industrially significant scale. Industrial plants, oil refining and the gas grid are typically referred to as hard-to-abate sectors, facing challenges and complications in the path to decarbonisation, so the availability of larger scale electrolysers is a key step forward. It is for this reason it is being watched eagerly by other European industrial clusters, as well as the European Commission. Indeed, European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson visited the REFHYNE site in July last year.

As ITM Power's representative on the Eurogas Board, I am keen to stress that the technology is as much an electricity sector solution as a gas sector solution. We at ITM Power see electrolysers as emblematic of the energy system integration we should be working towards to achieve our climate neutrality goals. However, while the technology may not be new, a clear and coherent policy framework is yet to be put in place that can outline a path for the uptake of renewable and low carbon gases. Traditionally those sectors - electricity and gas - have been separate. But there are multiple benefits from sector coupling. The policies being made now need to bridge the two, and it is imperative that we get the legislation right in the next couple of years. We can't wait any longer to begin decarbonising some of these processes. But utilising the full potential of hydrogen will require pragmatism and a lot of cross-sector collaboration.

Done well, REFHYNE and other projects like it can begin to create a backbone against which Europe can build a new energy system and ultimately a hydrogen economy.

Marcus Newborough is Development Director at ITM Power